Wizened hunklet Jonathan Taylor Thomas stars in the prematurely released holiday comedy I'll Be Home For Christmas as a conniving college student lured back from California to his upper-middle-class home in New York with the promise of an antique Porsche. His journey is made difficult, however, when a group of unhappy jocks dumps him in the desert on the eve of his departure, leaving him with a Santa Claus outfit on his back and his fading Tiger Beat charm as his only bargaining points to make the cross-country journey. Along the way, does he learn a lesson about the true meaning of the season from a good-natured thief, a group of Tom Jones-loving grannies, a down-on-his-luck cop, a generous small-town Wisconsin mayor, and a wide-eyed, seriously ill Hispanic child named Esteban? You betcha! And it's about as cloying and corny as it can be without giving Thomas a wise-beyond-his years doomed hunchback child as a sidekick. The only pleasure in watching I'll Be Home For Christmas, aside from a few cool Christmas novelty songs on the soundtrack, comes from the fact that the teen idol formerly known as JTT is forced to wear a Santa costume through pretty much the entire movie, including an extended sequence in the desert and a scene that places Thomas in a pet carrier with a large, overly friendly-looking dog. It looks extremely uncomfortable.